Why isn't this guy locked up in an institution?

First of all, how the hell can anybody be a Zune fanboy? I mean, take a look at it. It looks like crap, and on top of that just like everything else from the big Satan in Redmond it's a handicapped device weighted down by DRM and functionality that only works a little bit (such as the retarded song-sharing). It's ugly, stupid and the claim that it was the "iPod killer" is the silliest ever.

But still, there's people actually delusional enough to willingly call themselves fans of the device. The most radical example of a Zune fanboy is the wacko with all those Zune tattoos and apparently now he's taking it one step further - he wants to change his name to Microsoft Zune!!!

This guy is beyond retarded. I'm really at a loss for words here. It almost makes me want to buy an iPod just to counteract his "Zune-love".

What time is it?

Seriously now, what's up with all these huge clocks that seem to be a part of every piece of software these days? These things are everywhere!

Windows Vista's desktop gadget application? Huge frickin' clock. Google Desktop? Huge frickin' clock. iGoogle homepage? Huge frickin' clock.

Has every computer user suddenly become half-blind or forgotten how to read the ordinary clock that's been part of desktop systems for twenty years now? I don't get it.

So a free iPhone wasn't enough for ya?

This is too funny. Take that, you greedy bastards! And iPhwned == hilarious.

Mine! All mine!

Bought me a new, although used, computer the other day. I've been looking for a machine to use as a fileserver (running NFS, Samba and such) and stumbled upon an auction for a dual-processor PowerMac G4. I really love the way those boxes look so I decided this was to be my fileserver.

The specifications for this model of PowerMac are not that impressive, 450MHz processors hardly scare anybody even when they come in pairs, but there are some pretty neat upgrades that can be made for a reasonable sum of money and that would make it a fairly powerful beast.

I won the bidding however and I'm picking it up on Tuesday next week. Yay me!

So much for selling your soul to the devil Novell...

Begun the Linux wars has...

As reported and thoroughly investigated in this article on Groklaw a lawsuit has been brought to Linux-distributors Novell and Red Hat. In the article a good case is made for who's really behind the lawsuit (no, it's not really the plaintiff IP Innovation..) and you guessed it, it's Microsoft.

This should come as no surprise though. We all know that Microsoft are scared shitless of the little penguin that could, particularly Steve Ballmer it seems. In my opinion, unlike in the SCO-case this time they're not even trying to hide that it's them behind it all. The trail back to them is not very elaborate and good 'ole Stevie B. even predicted that a lawsuit was on it's way just the other day, which makes it look like he said "we could do this" and then went on and proved it. Not very smooth if they really were trying to remain the secret backer of yet another patent-claim catastrophe.

Interestingly enough Apple were previously attacked by IP Innovation with a similar claim and apparently have now paid the patent-trolls in order to keep them quiet.

Novell must be damn proud of themselves right now. First they sell their soul to Microsoft and now they're being stabbed in the back. Nice one, Stevie.

USB on/off-switch mod

Last week I got the idea to create a USB-cable with an on/off-switch. This because I have several USB-devices (mug heater, mug chiller, reading light, battery charger, etc.) that have no on/off-switch and I think it's really tiresome having to unplug them every time I want them turned off.

So I looked up USB on Wikipedia and learned, amongst other things, that the 5V power that a USB-port supplies travels through the red wire inside the USB-cable. So it should really not be any more difficult than just cutting the red cable and connecting the ends to an ordinary on/off-switch that you can buy in any store that carries electronics and such.

It took me a couple of tries to get it right though. Inside a USB-cable there's not just the four wires (red, black, green and white) that send power and data back and forth but also foil that wraps around all four wires and a bunch of thin metallic wires and apparently this foil and possibly also the metallic wires should not be removed when pealing the outer insulation off the USB-cable because then it will not work. It took me three USB-cables to figure that one out. Very frustrating.

But anyway, on the third try I got it right and I now have a USB-cable with a nice on/off-switch mounted on it and I can turn my mug chiller on and off just like I do the reading lamp by my bed. Mission accomplished.

Windows Vista provides the greatest user experience ever

Yeah, you got me. That sure was sarcasm.

A couple of weeks ago I assisted my dad in buying a new laptop. Their old laptop was state of the art when they bought it about five years ago, but today it's not really cutting it. So, time to buy a new one.

We went to the Sony Center and there my dad fell in love a pretty sweet Vaio-machine. It's really a damn sexy piece of hardware and after inspecting the specs I gave it the thumbs-up. Only one problem really, it ran Windows Vista.

Now why is this a problem besides the fact that I loathe Windows? Well, it's no secret that plenty of people that have gone from Windows XP to Vista have had and still are having a shitload of problems with Microsoft's new and sparkly OS. My dad is not a complete computer imbecile at all, he's a pretty ordinary user. He does some e-mail, surfs the web, plays some simple online games, does his banking online, organizes photos from his digital camera and things like that. Nothing fancy, nothing very advanced or odd at all.

So, while I was sceptical I thought that since good 'ole dad's computer habits were nothing out of the ordinary I said "what the hell" and hoped for the best.

Silly me. Stupid damn fuckin' silly me.

I assisted with starting up the new laptop, installing all of the bundled software (Norton Security-stuff, a bunch of Google-apps, etc.) and configured it as best I could (remember that this was my first hands-on experience with Vista and that I haven't been a regular Windows-user for over six years) and when I left my parents' house it seemed to be working fine.

It took about two days until I received the first desperate call from my dad about his new computer "not working". I googled some stuff and helped him out as well as I could over the phone. That was just the first of a seemingly never-ending series of calls, and all of them had to do with the new and fancy features in Vista fucking up my dad's computing experience. In most cases I managed to hook him up with some sort of temporary work-around to the problem that he could live with until I had the time to get over there and get under the hood of the thing.

This week however things got so bad that my dad called me to say that he needs the old laptop back (I'd borrowed it to do some experimenting on) because the new one was completely unusable to him.

He couldn't send e-mail properly, no applications except Internet Explorer 7 were allowed access to the internet, every time he tried to do just about anything useful he was driven mad by a bombardment of security pop-ups, the list goes on and on. What finally did it though was that IE and Vista wouldn't allow him to install the certificate for his bank, thus making it impossible to pay their bills online. Awesome. Now tell me what's so great about Vista again? Fuck.

So here's someone that uses computers at work and has been using Windows XP both at home and at work for the past five years. Not a dimwit at all, actually pretty computer-savvy for a man in his late fifties. He goes out and buys a brand new awesome computer for $1800 with the "latest and greatest OS" and after three weeks he switches back to his old piece of cyberjunk because he's being terrorized by Vista. Good one Microsoft.

Seriously, Vista must be the biggest piece of shit ever released by Microsoft. When experienced XP-users can't get the damn thing to work properly you gotta call it a freakin' failure, because that's what it is. I don't give a rat's ass if it's "more secure" (I doubt it) or looks snazzier than XP. It's completely unusable to ordinary computer users as proven by my dad and many others I've read about online.

If it wasn't for my dad having to run a few work-specific applications (which requires Windows) on his computer I'd have him buying a Mac or switching to Linux in a heartbeat.

And you know I'm gonna have to go over there next week and spend a hundred hours "fixing" that brand new Sony Vaio. Just because it's been soiled by Vista. Damn.

Windows Vista is a sad piece of shit and once again Microsoft should be ashamed of themselves for releasing such a pathetic excuse for an operating system.